New FSF campaigns team to coordinate free software activism in defense of computer user freedom

BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA—Wednesday, May 16, 2007—The Free Software
Foundation (FSF) today announced the creation of a new activist campaigns team
to organize public support into action on software freedom issues.

The new team will be composed of two campaigns managers and an international
group of volunteers, with one position to be filled by current staff member
John Sullivan and the other by new appointee Joshua Gay. They will work
together on the FSF campaigns BadVista.org
and DefectiveByDesign.org, and
launch additional campaigns in the near future.

In announcing the decision to create the campaigns team, FSF executive director
Peter Brown spoke about the recent attempts by Microsoft to use software
patents as the basis of an attack against free software. “Microsoft continues
to threaten the freedom of all computer users with vague claims of
software-patent infringement. Although more people than ever before in the U.S.
have the technical capabilities to develop software, the blight of patents
prevents them from making useful advancements. As such, we need to ask—what
is the best way to eliminate the specter of software patents so that free
software development can flourish, and how do we get organized to make it
happen?”

With the expanding use of free software, the defense of its ethical principles
is becoming more important. In addition to software patents, other proprietary
software schemes like Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and Treacherous
Computing threaten to stifle free software development and shackle users to
proprietary software.

“In the early years of the free software movement, the FSF worked to solve the
problem of proprietary software by funding free software development. With the
creation of this campaigns team, we are expanding our work to help clear the
way politically and publicly for free software,” said John Sullivan.

On joining the campaigns team, Joshua Gay said, “I am excited to be joining the
staff of the Free Software Foundation at such an exciting and important time. I
look forward to working with John Sullivan and continuing the momentum of
BadVista.org, DefectivebyDesign.org, and community adoption of GPLv3. Most of
all, I hope to begin reaching out and working with the many communities that
value and appreciate the importance of software freedom.”

About the Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting
computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer
programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom)
software—particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux
variants—and free documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to
spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of
software. Its Web site, located at www.fsf.org, is an important source of
information about GNU/Linux. Donations to support the FSF's work can be made at
http://donate.fsf.org. Its headquarters are
in Boston, MA, USA.